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Author Topic: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?  (Read 4863 times)
guesst
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Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« on: September 08, 2007, 05:55:15 pm »

I remember finding and playing a game a while back because someone mentioned that it inspired SC1's spinning star map and little animated window. now I can't seem to find it.

In the end, it did have a spinning star map and an animated window. And while SC1 may have borrowed these elements, SC1 was so much a different game that it's difficult to compare the two. IMHO, more game should have had that little animated window.

Doe anyone remember the name of this game?
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2007, 11:51:15 pm »

That's a good question but I think it might be who stole the spinning map from SC1? I'm pretty sure that the idea for SC1 came directly from PR3's earlier work, Archon.
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2007, 01:23:01 am »

What Archon has in common with SC1 is the combination of turn-based and action gameplay, and various unit types with strengths and weaknesses against eachother (I think). You can try it for yourself; there's a modern port named XArchon for *nix systems.

But there's no starmap. There's a chess-like board. And it's not spinning, nor is it 3D (in the original at least).
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2007, 10:07:21 pm »

"Supremacy aka Overlord", I think.

You should probably know where to find it, guesst.

That's Amiga/C64, though... And no, I have never played it. Wink
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #4 on: September 15, 2007, 05:54:04 am »

That's it. And that's where I saw it before. I'm gonna cross reference those two so I can find it next time.
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #5 on: September 15, 2007, 10:17:36 am »

Star Control was released in July 1990. Supremacy was released in 1990 too. There's no way one game could steal something as big as the 3D starmap.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2007, 10:23:34 am by Valaggar the Wackrazy One » Logged
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #6 on: September 15, 2007, 04:52:50 pm »

Personally, I don't care for the rotating Starmap in SC1. It would have been better without it IMO.

btw Is ArchonX multiplayer only?
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #7 on: September 15, 2007, 05:36:35 pm »

btw Is ArchonX multiplayer only?
XArchon (as of version 0.5) has computer and human (local or network) player support.
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #8 on: September 17, 2007, 02:25:52 am »

Personally, I don't care for the rotating Starmap in SC1. It would have been better without it IMO.

btw Is ArchonX multiplayer only?

I'm repressing the desire to respond violently to this statement.

SC1 wouldn't have been better without the rotating starmap. SC2 was worse without it.
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #9 on: September 17, 2007, 06:48:40 am »

SC1 wouldn't have been better without the rotating starmap. SC2 was worse without it.

Out of interest, how would you have implemented the 3D map in SC2? It worked great in SC1, but those were fairly small maps without the same sort of depth (star systems and so forth). SC3 certainly demonstrated (IMO) that making a large 3D map can be very hard. Or did you find that map easy to navigate?
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #10 on: September 17, 2007, 02:01:48 pm »

A 3D starmap may help for "realism", but it does nothing for gameplay.
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #11 on: September 17, 2007, 02:28:05 pm »

SC1 wouldn't have been better without the rotating starmap. SC2 was worse without it.

Out of interest, how would you have implemented the 3D map in SC2? It worked great in SC1, but those were fairly small maps without the same sort of depth (star systems and so forth). SC3 certainly demonstrated (IMO) that making a large 3D map can be very hard. Or did you find that map easy to navigate?
Actually, if they did it Sword of the Stars-style (free camera navigation in 3D among the stars - quite difficult to do in 1994, admittedly), it'd have been perfectly easy to navigate. Or they could do it Iron Seed-style (showing the projections of the stars on the "horizontal" plane and the two "vertical" planes). I do prefer the 2D map for SC2, though - 3D would be unneeded complexity for a game such as SC2, which doesn't focus on strategy/tactics.

Plus, after all, the 3D starmap in SC1 was pretty much just eye-candy - SC1 maps were basically pathways made of stars on the surface of a cylinder - the exact same map could've been reproduced on a 2D surface, wrapping around on the X axis (like in Civilization). And even if the stars weren't arranged strictly on the surface of a cylinder, SC1 maps were just topologic, not geometric, maps - the exact same pathways could've been reproduced in 2D, it's not like you were allowed to linger in interstellar space.

A 3D starmap may help for "realism", but it does nothing for gameplay.
Good choice putting the quotation marks around "realism". After all, with speeds much more than thousands of times greater than the speed of light, "height" doesn't matter anymore, as the "height" of our galaxy is much, much smaller than it's "width". Not to mention that if we're dealing with HyperSpace, we can just say that that's how gravity wells are arranged there - in a plane.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2007, 02:39:28 pm by Valaggar the Wackrazy One » Logged
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #12 on: September 17, 2007, 11:59:46 pm »

SC1 wouldn't have been better without the rotating starmap. SC2 was worse without it.

Out of interest, how would you have implemented the 3D map in SC2? It worked great in SC1, but those were fairly small maps without the same sort of depth (star systems and so forth). SC3 certainly demonstrated (IMO) that making a large 3D map can be very hard. Or did you find that map easy to navigate?
Actually, I did find the starmaps easy to navigate. Well, not easy to navigate, but that was the beauty of them. Plotting out paths, painstakingly navigating those paths with your capitol ships, only to discover that the path you had chosen was a dead-end and the dead end you sent your wimps to mine out is now being violently reamed, that's what the game was about.

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Plus, after all, the 3D starmap in SC1 was pretty much just eye-candy - SC1 maps were basically pathways made of stars on the surface of a cylinder - the exact same map could've been reproduced on a 2D surface, wrapping around on the X axis (like in Civilization). And even if the stars weren't arranged strictly on the surface of a cylinder, SC1 maps were just topologic, not geometric, maps - the exact same pathways could've been reproduced in 2D, it's not like you were allowed to linger in interstellar space.
Are you sure about that? it seems to me there were paths through the middle of the space. I remember a discussion on the PONAF boards where we tried to disassemble how the maps were made and in the end just had to throw our hands up in surrender. I'd be kinda disapointed to discover what you say is true.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2007, 06:37:35 pm by guesst » Logged

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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #13 on: September 18, 2007, 01:20:16 am »

The 3D map worked well but did nothing for the game imo. And thanx again Novus.

« Last Edit: September 18, 2007, 01:32:25 am by RTyp06 » Logged
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Re: Where did SC1 steal its spinning starmap and animation window from?
« Reply #14 on: September 18, 2007, 06:56:11 am »

Actually, I did find the starmaps easy to navigate. Well, not easy to navigate, but that was the beauty of them. Plotting out paths, painstakingly navigating those paths with your capitol ships, only to discover that the path you had chosen was a dead-end and the dead end you sent your wimps to mine out is now being violently reamed, that's what the game was about.

You seem to be talking exclusively about the Starmaps in SC1, not about the SC3 starmap I asked you about, unless I missed large parts of the game.

My question was wether you found the SC3 starmap as useful and easy as the SC1 maps, seeing as it was a lot bigger and had no tactical parts (you could travel from anywhere to anywhere). And if you didn't think that it was as good as the SC1 maps, how would you have implemented a SC2 map?

Valaggar: Yeah, any of those would have made it easier and more intuitive with a large map.
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